Tuesday 2 September 2014

Numerology

I know. I know. I know. Yes, from September 2013 to now is eleven, not ten years. Which doesn't make it any the sadder.

I blame my first maths teacher at big school, Miss Cowie, (cowie by name, cowie by nature), who was absolutely ruthless and terrifying and the most unbelievable snob to boot. 'Well we all know about Leslie and her North London ways', I remember her declaring, leaving Leslie withered and me, a South London child, mystified. To this day, (while never doubting for one moment that, in Miss Cowie's view, they were beyond the pale), I wonder what exactly North London ways were/are and whether perhaps, unwittingly, I too now exhibit some of them, perish the thort.

Really though, I should blame the Chelsea Froebel School, a realm where mathematics consisted of rote learning of times tables, many happy hours with the beautiful but ultimately unenlightening Cuisenaire rods, interpolated with the very rare days when the inspector came round. On those occasions, glass vessels of all sizes would be produced, newspaper would be spread out on all the tables and we would spend a wildly fun time splashing each other while pretending to penetrate the mysteries of the gill measurement, (now there was a useful way to spend one's time; how often I've had recourse to my familiarity with one-third of a gill glass jars; indeed, one might even ask where I would be today without such a solid foundation in the science of liquid volume; on the other hand, one might not.

20 comments:

  1. Not for approval: you mean 2003, not 2013.

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    1. I think I'll leave the mistake, and your comment, in as the mistake really rather proves my point about being lousy at maths, don't you think?

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  2. In an American context, gill measurement sounds useful chiefly to icthyologists. At least, I've never seen a recipe specify anything in gills. Memorizing times tables sounds very useful if tedious.

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    1. I worked at Gordon's Gin briefly, (long story), and I seem to remember that gill measures were integral to the work - constantly having to be replaced in pubs all over England. Heaven knows what happened when the EU decreed that metric measurements must rule the day

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  3. Mrs Godley was my 1st Piano Teacher! Memories of the fish cakes & processed peas in the basement Dining Room! But what was the Headmistress' name? I recall sir Charles who used to drive us to Battersea Park for Games in the minibus until the police stopped him after he jumped a red light!

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    1. Poor Sir Charles - he blended in my mind with Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas Home and my dad. The world seemed to be ruled by apparently benign ageing men. None of them was benign probably - except perhaps Sir Charles. His wife's name was Lady Daphne Edwards and after he died she went on a cruise and brought back photographs she showed us of herself at the captain's table dispaying what my 8-year-old self regarded as rather startling decolletage. Thank you for reminding me about the fish cakes and those horrible peas. Despite the peas, I think it was an exceptionally nice place (while I reiterate that it was by no means the ideal place to embark if you were planning a career in maths or science). Do you think it was nicer than other primary schools or is that just a kind of Stockholm Syndrome illusion that I have?

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    2. Oh, and the tinned beetroot... the old car tyres in the playground... little bottles of milk at playtime... listening to "Listen with Mother" ("Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll/I shall begin".)... learning to read (I vividly remember the moment it suddenly gelled!)... the times tables (although I'm still rubbish at Maths!!)... and dear old Sir Charles. Aye, we 'ad it ruff when I were a lad ;)

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    3. Oh, and the tinned beetroot... the old car tyres in the playground... little bottles of milk at playtime... listening to "Listen with Mother" ("Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll/I shall begin".)... learning to read (I vividly remember the moment it suddenly gelled!)... the times tables (although I'm still rubbish at Maths!!)... and dear old Sir Charles. Aye, we 'ad it ruff when I were a lad ;)

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    4. I love the entirely positive memories people have of that school - I thought it was just me but I believe now that it really was an idyll and we were all lucky to go there. I must dredge up more memories about it - they are all so pleasant, until a monster called Emily Anderson arrived and terrorised us all. But that's another story, and an aberration when most of the time we lived under a charming spell

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    5. Unknown - I remember going to Battersea, and also an accident at an intersection in the van with Sir Charles. Do I remember that the van had wooden benches?

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    6. You do. I was sick on one once

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  4. Sir Charles drove the school can that picked us up for school and dropped us off again. His wife, the head, was Lady Edwards. I remember a teacher Mrs. Wheeler and much else. It was the best school I ever attended. All that I later became interested in had it's start at this school. I attended from 55 to 59 and render many if the students by name. I'd love to hear more.

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    1. This is so moving. My brother was born in 52 so you might have known him, except we went off to Malaya and then he was sent to boarding school - his name was Mark Colvin

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  5. And by the way, I became excellent at math, and have spent my life in scientific research.

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    1. Your comment has shown me what I had only been vaguely aware of - all my main interests too originated there too. I suppose I will have to resign myself to being absolutely hopelessly thick re maths now, given your career - I'd long suspected that was the real truth. I wish we'd overlapped but I was not there until the '60s. I was very happy until the last couple of years when I did want more difficulty - I then went on to a very demanding school and got more than enough of that

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  6. The playground in the back: a rope net we could climb on, a tyre swing; an ash tree that dropped its long stalks we used as swords, a ball game that regularly went over the wall, and regular visits for games in the park (which one?)

    Nature Table: in one of the higher class rooms, in the corner of the room was table where children could display natural things they had found. I remember old man's beard, some frogs eggs which immediately went into an aquarium and slowly turned into tadpoles and eventually frogs. We had a competition to remember the names of birds on cards on the wall. One boy brought back a zebra rug from safari in Kenya.

    Dancing (ugg), storytelling, carpentry, painting, papier mache puppet making, naps (more ugg).

    A poem told by my deskmate (Sarah Barnes):
    I had a hippopotamus
    I kept him in a shed
    I fed him upon vegetables and vegetable bread
    I thought she was brilliant (but later found she didn't write this); she tried unsuccessfully to teach me to read, but did teach me math. I was (and still am) a slow and lazy learner. I compensated by depth and thoroughness.

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    1. That rope net - I've never seen another
      The nature table, don't be me started - John Belgravia (who claimed his father owned the whole of Belgravia) brought in a perfectly ordinary rock that he claimed was a meteorite that his father had caught as it fell out of the sky on the weekend in the country; I brought a dead mole in a shoe box and Miss Simpson threw it away after only TWO DAYS - because Miss Pickard said it was unhealthy. Tadpoles, my mind was almost entirely preoccupied with tadpoles for at least two years of my childhood. It was Battersea Park.

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  7. The school seems to still exist in the same location! Is this possible?? Here is the e-mail of the registrar: . www.redcliffeschool.com

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    1. It's there, but I've heard it is no longer our school - now very expensive and serving parents with dreams of the great public schools for their children. Maybe that's wrong, but that's what I've been told.

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